


english and russian and how to hold your breath in

by joeri



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Blood, Drabble, Freeform, Gen, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-17
Updated: 2019-02-17
Packaged: 2019-10-30 11:05:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17827394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joeri/pseuds/joeri
Summary: snapshots of gore.





	english and russian and how to hold your breath in

**Author's Note:**

> i found this in an old privatter when i was writing ndrv3 poetry last year, decided i liked it enough to actually post it

The first time you choke up blood, you don’t know what it is. You’ve never had enough of it in your mouth at once to know what it should feel like. It tastes rusty in your mouth, like you’ve been sucking on a lead pipe and yet, it tastes like it belongs there. You don’t know why you cough it up. You want to learn how to keep your blood inside of your body.

It stains your sheets and so you never let friends visit. It stains your teeth and so you brush them thrice a day. 

The second time, you think it’s unfair. You punch the wall to make it bleed too. You punch Saihara and hope he bleeds too. He doesn’t. And when you’re in your right mind, you’re thankful for that. The guilt would’ve eaten you otherwise.

This anger, you hope it can swallow the hurt, swallow the blood. Like you do, with every cough you swallow the blood.

The third time is when you can't swallow without drowning. You start to beg, start to collapse to your knees with your toothbrush and watch it turn red. The taste of copper taunts you. Like a mouthful of pennies, the ichor falls out of you. It spills like paint. It turns your shower crimson. The pants you’ve got a thousand copies of are all getting the same kool-aid red stains in the knees and you think this can’t possibly be how it ends.

You have to go to space. You learned English, and Russian, and how to hold your breath in.

The fourth time brings tears. You don’t cry but you do this time. Your stomach churns with dust and ash and the dust and ash of your fallen dreams. Your hands shake, not with your fellow trainees or with a far-off alien, but with your devils. Your hands shake, not with the doctor who will deliver the baby you want to have one day, not with a father-in-law and not with God.

With your grief.

The fifth time is when you learn.

To make another human being bleed _that_ much, it’s only natural that you balance the scale.

You don’t think you can do it but you have to watch him die. You inhale deeply against the roar of mechanical death.

You learned English, and Russian, and how to hold your breath in.

But not how to hold your blood inside of your body.


End file.
